Decisions
by alectheta
Summary: Ellie has reached a crossroads: Will she keep taking charge of her life or go back to merely reacting to what others decide for her? Set during s02e07.


The courtroom floor seemed to drop out from under her and Lucy's stomach plummeted into the dark abyss below. At the realisation that she had put El into this situation, nausea surged up in her throat. She clapped a hand over her mouth in shock.

The defence was claiming that El had paid Lucy to give evidence against Joe because supposedly, El had been having an affair with DI Hardy and wanted Joe out of the way. El. An affair. With Hardy. He was her boss at the time, for fuck's sake. This was El! Her infuriatingly upright baby sister! She'd never have an affair, let alone with her boss. The accusation should have been too ridiculous to be taken seriously by anyone. Which person in their right mind would even come close to thinking that of her? Yet that awful lawyer was banging on in her loud and acrid voice claiming El had wanted Joe behind bars so she could be together with her grumpy boss. Ridiculous.

However, no matter how pathetic the attempt at discrediting El was to anyone who really knew her, they were being serious about it. Shit. Shit shit shit.

At the thought that she might never be able to fix the fallout from trap she had involuntarily set up for her baby sister, Lucy felt even sicker. She needed to get away from the suffocating, dusty air in the courtroom. Thankfully, a break was announced and she rushed through the opening doors and heaved in a breath of slightly less stale air in the hallway. It wasn't enough. She hurried down the wooden flight of stairs and crossed the mockingly bright lobby as quickly as possible without breaking into a jog. She could see her hands shaking when she pushed the glass door open. Barely outside, Lucy fumbled around for the cigarette pack and the lighter in her handbag. Once she had managed to get the cigarette going and was left without a distraction, the consequences of her actions came rushing back to her. How had she fallen so low as to use blackmail to get her sister to help her out money-wise yet another time? In her desperation — with most of her furniture gone, yet nearly all of her debts still there — it hadn't occurred to her at all that whatever she told El that day would always be seen in conjunction with the money her sister gave her, if it ever came out. Which it had. How had that even happened?

Her phone rang. Lucy accepted the call without even looking at the screen while nervously pulling on her cigarette.

„You are going to pick up Fred from the childminder's right now. He'll stay overnight with you. And so is Tom. We'll bring him over later," she heard Hardy's stern voice. She exhaled to ask him what he was thinking ordering her around like that, but didn't even get so far as to start speaking.

„Don't even think about protesting. You've done enough damage. I need Ellie to go to Sandbrook with me, we've got work to do," Hardy spat at her in an even stronger Scottish accent than usual.

Strangely, Lucy felt something akin to relief at being told what to do. She didn't know how to fix the mess she had caused, but doing as Hardy said and watching the boys would mean that he and El would go to Sandbrook again, which would distract her from yet another horrible turn the trial had taken — one that Lucy had caused herself. She'd be able to do something for her sister, however indirectly. So she nodded, still openmouthed, forgetting he couldn't see her.

„Go go go, get a move on!" Hardy barked at her. Startled into action, she stammered, „Yeah, right, ok, I'll go get Fred now," dropped her cigarette, ground it out with her foot and rushed down the stairs from the court building to the street below.

Alec hung up on Lucy once he was sure she was going to do as he'd told her. Earlier, Tess had called him with information on where to find Gary Thorpe. They needed to question him as quickly as possible, which meant Ellie and he needed to go back to Sandbrook.

With that, his thoughts returned to Ellie. He was livid. Why did she do something so incredibly stupid as to give Lucy money in exchange for information? She hadn't even told him. She should have. He should have known about it. It wouldn't have made the action itself any less problematic, but at least he wouldn't have felt so betrayed.

He still wouldn't know about it if it hadn't been for Paul, who had called to inform him of what had gone down in court today. Of course Paul had done it because he thought Ellie shouldn't be left alone today and that Hardy would take care of that. Well, he got that right, but he was going to give her a piece of his mind nevertheless.

When Ellie turned the car into her driveway and saw Alec leaning against the side of her house, the barely contained distress etched into her face turned into surprise and then into incredulity — when had he become so good at reading her? He waved at her and Tom to make her feel a little more at ease until they dropped Tom off at Lucy's. No matter how furious he was, he wasn't going to have a go at her in front of Tom.

Walking up to the passenger side, he sternly told Ellie, who was just getting out of the driver's seat, to get back into the car. At her incredulous „What?" his anger came back in full force.

Barely able to contain it, he curtly told Tom „You boys are going over to aunt Lucy's. Sleepover, it'll be fun."

„What's he talking about, mum?" Tom asked.

„I have no idea. You're not going to Lucy's," Ellie said in defiance.

„Aye there, I've arranged it. Me and your mum have got work to do. You'll have more fun at your aunt's anyway, we'll drop you there now," Alec said, his tone leaving no doubt that he wouldn't back off on the matter. While getting into the passenger seat, he casually asked Ellie „How was court?", accompanied it with a not so casual, angry glance at her, and slammed the door shut without even waiting for an answer.

Upon seeing the resigned look on his mother's face, Tom got into the back seat without a word of protest.

They spent the drive to Lucy's in strained silence. Lucy opened the door with Fred on her arm the moment she heard El's car approaching. Tom reluctantly dragged himself out of the backseat until he caught his mum's gaze. She wordlessly urged him not to put up a fight about the whole thing, so he walked over to Lucy and watched his mum kiss Fred goodbye. Then she turned to him to give him a hug. He squeezed her tightly, unable to conceal how glad he was to be back with her, until he remembered that a fuming Alec Hardy was sitting in the car watching them. Tom awkwardly extricated himself from his mum's arms to go into his aunt's house. After an exchange of glances that were heavy with disappointment, anger, and remorse between her and El, Lucy followed him with Fred.

Alec didn't say a word when Ellie got back into the car.

„So, where are we going?" she asked with barely held back annoyance, already feeling lonely without her kids.

„Sandbrook."

„Right."

„Just drive, Miller."

So she did.

Alec managed to keep his mouth shut until they got onto the motorway. By then, he was seething with anger.

„You bribed your sister! Why didn't you tell me that before?"

„I did not bribe her! I lent her money and she made a statement, those are two separate things!" Ellie had raised her voice to make herself heard over Alec's angry Scottish rant. By the end she was shrieking and hit the steering wheel in frustration.

„Oh come on, Miller!" he spat back without even waiting until she was done speaking, drawing her name out in exasperation. „You could see how that could be put together!"

Ellie didn't care anymore if she was talking over him or not. Sick of taking flack for everything that had gone wrong, she yelled „Look, I'm a human being, I made a mistake! I'm not the one who killed a child! They were going to shut the case down and she said she knew something, but she needed money and I DID NOT KNOW IT WAS GONNA BE JOE!" while gesturing around with her right hand in agitation.

„Oh that's all right then!" Alec mocked, his heavy accent grating on Ellie's nerves.

„It's going to be all right, isn't it? They've got enough, haven't they, the prosecution? They've got enough evidence?" Ellie was close to crying imagining that the trial would fall apart and Joe would walk free after all because of this. She hated to hear the tremor in her voice.

„I don't know. It could go either way. Juries are funny animals," Alec said, a little calmer, but with a tinge of hopelessness to his voice.

„Would it kill you to try and be reassuring? You are such terrible bloody company! And why are we going back here anyway?" It was either crying or being angry. Ellie chose being angry.

„Tess has found that Gary Thorpe. I've been wanting to talk to him."

Later, when she concentrated on the back and forth of questions and answers and her observations of the people in front of her when they interviewed Gary Thorpe and Ricky Gillespie, a nagging little voice in Ellie's head wondered about the effortlessness with which the overbearing git at her side and she herself worked together after the heated argument they'd just had.

Above all, however, she was grateful to have something else than the trial to concentrate on, so she focused on the case at hand and did her best to ignore everything else — something she was getting better at with every day she somehow managed to get through.

The respite lasted until she was alone in her hotel room that evening. Its anonymous blandness did nothing to help divert her thoughts and the events of the day came rushing back to her while she stared at the hideous purple sheets on the bed. Ellie had sat down in the only chair in the room, the orange of her coat clashing with the colour of the upholstery. She couldn't be bothered to take the coat off. There was no point in changing and going to bed anyway. She knew she wouldn't fall asleep for hours, only to be haunted by nightmares about Joe and the night Danny died once she did. Every time she had startled awake in the past months, drenched in sweat, she had vowed to spend as little time in bed as possible.

Now that all distractions were gone, the memory of being on the witness stand this morning came back to her with a vengeance. What would she do if Joe wasn't convicted because of the money she had lent Lucy? She couldn't bear to think about it.

Thank goodness she'd had something else to occupy herself with this afternoon. Although she could have strangled Hardy for just deciding for her and her kids on what to do without so much as informing, never mind asking her if she agreed! She'd been so shocked by what had happened in court that habit had taken over and she'd just done as he'd said.

He wasn't her boss anymore though. He was just an overbearing grump and had no business deciding what she or her boys were doing. Why did he even think he had a right to do that? God, it felt good to be angry instead of sad or overwhelmed for a change. Ellie had always tried to be understanding and willing to compromise, but she was more than done with letting others tell her what she should have done, what she shouldn't have done, or what she should do now. She was as angry as she hadn't been in a long time. For once, there were no tears, only dry, crackling, fiery rage.

She wasn't going to let anyone put her down or order her around anymore. Yes, her life had gone to shit, but that didn't mean that everybody else suddenly had the right to stomp all over it as well. It was still her shitty life and she was going to be the one who decided on how she was going to get through it. Nor did anyone beside her get to tell her kids what to do. She was their bloody mother.

She was going to tell everybody off who thought otherwise, starting with fucking Alec Hardy.

Ellie ripped the door of her room open with so much force that it crashed into the bathroom wall behind it with a loud thud. For once, she didn't care if she disturbed the other guests. She stormed across the dimly lit hall and banged on Hardy's door strongly enough that it shook under her hands.

„Open the bloody door, you wanker!" she yelled when he didn't immediately respond.

„Shh, Miller, what's going on, why are you making such a commotion?" Alec tried to hush her once he'd opened the door.

He attempted to take her by the elbow of her still raised arm to pull her into the room so her shouting wouldn't draw attention. She shook off his hand with so much force that she accidentally hit his forearm with her wrist. Unlike Alec, she didn't even flinch. His face had gone slack in shock and he was staring at her from eyes open so wide that his brown irises looked lost amidst the white surrounding them.

„Don't you dare shove me around! There's no need to drag me in here, I've come here because I wanted to, because I'm going to talk to you and you are going to bloody listen!"

While yelling at him, Ellie had advanced on Alec so he had to back up into the room. Ellie kicked the door shut behind her with her foot. It closed with a satisfying bang. She kept walking towards him. Just this once, making him uncomfortable by getting into his personal space left her feeling powerful instead of like an intruder. She revelled in the control she had over the situation, over him. She'd felt out of control so often these past months, only ever reacting to the latest drama and Hardy's demands. Finally, she was going to act for once and set some boundaries that he'd better respect.

„Don't you ever tell me or anyone in my family what to do ever again, you hear me? I will not stand by any longer and let you order us around!"

In her outrage, Ellie had manoeuvred Alec further into the small single room. When the back of his legs hit the bed, he sagged onto it in disbelieving shock that Ellie - polite, friendly, well-adjusted Ellie Miller - was shouting at him.

„You will ask me before you go and do anything concerning me or my family, you understand? DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

Alec had seen her irritated before, but it had always been controlled annoyance rather than outright rage. Rage that was directed at him. He sat on the bed, dumbfounded, staring up at Ellie with his mouth hanging open and dimly aware of the synthetic feel of the covers under his hands. It took him a while to realise that she had stopped yelling and that the rigid lines of her face were looming over him as she was awaiting an answer.

He couldn't think of anything to say. The novelty of the situation threw him. He had never thought about how it felt for Ellie to be ordered around by him. That's what he'd been doing from the first day they met. He'd been her boss, after all. And after that… it had just stayed that way. He'd had far more experience in dealing with the kinds of mucked up situations they'd found themselves in, so he'd taken the lead. He'd just done what he'd been convinced had needed doing anyway.

Apparently, he'd been silent for too long. Without saying another word, Ellie drew herself up, gave Alec another hard look, her mouth drawn into an unusually thin line, turned around, and left. The sounds of her coat rustling with each of her deliberate movements and of the door being clicked shut with emphasis reverberated within him for a long time after she was gone.

In all those months since her return from Florida, Ellie had never felt quite as lonely as now. She was lying on the bed, grateful for the warmth of her coat now that the anger that had kept her going before had drained out of her. Staring up at the ceiling in the dim light of a streetlamp filtering in through a crack in the drawn curtains, she thought of her kids. They were all the close family she had left, and they needed her, and she needed them, their warmth and their affection. She missed them.

Looking back, she noticed how absent from their lives she had been ever since Joe's arrest. It had all overwhelmed her, finding a new job, moving, trying to fit in while dodging as many questions about her life before the move as possible. When Tom had decided he didn't want to have anything to do with her and refused to come live at the flat with her and Fred, she hadn't even had the energy to fight. She'd been so numb that the only emotion that ever cracked through the hardened shell of her soul had been bitterness.

Now, however, she was done with wallowing in self pity. All she wanted to do was to go home — home to her kids, home to the house — and get on with her life, whatever it may bring. She'd manage. She'd get through everything that was going to come, just as she had somehow made it from Joe's arrest until now.

Ellie felt useless and out of place lying around on a bed that wasn't hers in a town where her work was done. Why be here at all? Why indeed? She bolted upright. Why should she stay? She was the one with the car, after all. The driver — the one who could decide where to go and when to go. Ha. She was going to go home. As for when? As soon as possible.

Ellie briefly contemplated leaving Alec behind. It would serve him right to be at the receiving end of someone else's decisions without having any kind of say in it. She snickered when she pictured the aghast look on his face when he'd realise that he would have to figure out how to get home on his own. Without his faithful little puppy as a guide dog. The good mood drained out of her at the recollection of Claire's words. She'd been able to see what Ellie herself had yet had to understand. She could feel the heat spreading along her skin in belated embarrassment.

Enough. That was over now. The little puppy had grown up and developed a mind of her own.

Leaving without telling Alec still didn't feel right, however. It would have been hypocritical to complain about not being given any choices by him and then to leave without even giving him the option to come with her. Not that she was particularly keen on having him around at the moment. Still, she wasn't going to run away from the situation.

When the shock had worn off enough to render him capable to get up from the bed, Alec stood with a sigh and walked over to the window. With his hands in his pockets, he took in the view. His room overlooked a nondescript street lined with low-rising business buildings. He cringed when he saw the neon sign of a hairdresser's flashing at him mockingly from the other side. Beyond the shops, he could make out a narrow, fading streak of orange light barely above the horizon.

The colour reminded him of Ellie's coat.

Thankfully, a knock at the door prevented him from pursuing that thought any further.

Grateful for the distraction, Alec went to open the door. He'd expected anyone except Ellie on the other side.

"I'm going home tonight. If you want a ride, be at the car in exactly half an hour. If you're not, I'm leaving without you."

With that, she turned and went back across the hall to her room, leaving Alec standing in his own doorway.

Dumbstruck by her unexpectedly confident tone, he slowly closed the door. Shaking his head, he turned to look at the alarm clock on the dark brown night stand. 8:43 pm.

Sweeping a gaze over his few belongings scattered around the stuffy room in the cold, dim light of the energy-saving ceiling lamp, he considered Ellie's words.

She'd spoken about going home. Once, that would have meant going back to Daisy and Tess. When had he come to think about the little blue house on the water in Broadchurch as home? Yet that was what he'd thought of. Suddenly, the unfamiliarity of the hotel room felt oppressing. Alec had spent so much time in hotels over the past two years that he yearned to go back to the only place that had at least felt a little bit like his place at all during that time.

His pride, however, told him to stay and find another way to get back to Broadchurch tomorrow. Sure, they were done with the work they'd come here to do, but he couldn't just let Ellie order him around like that. He scrubbed both of his hands over his face in embarrassment when the hypocrisy of that thought sunk in. However, accepting her ultimatum would equal acknowledging his guilt, and he didn't feel guilty. He had just done what he had thought was the right thing to do.

Alec had just never considered the situation from Ellie's point of view, how it would make her feel to be ordered around like that.

Today, for example. While he'd been furious at Ellie after he had learned from Paul what had come to light in court, he had also been concerned about her, thinking that she shouldn't be by herself for the rest of the day. He'd been afraid she would break down again ever since that very first day of the trial when she'd hidden in the loo, especially since she didn't accept any kind of support that went beyond giving her something to work on. All he was able to do to help her was distract her as thoroughly as possible.

Tess' information on where to find Gary Thorpe had come at just the right time. It had been a lucky coincidence and he'd just connected all the dots - Ellie, who had needed a distraction; Gary Thorpe, who'd had to be interviewed as soon as possible, both of which meant going to Sandbrook while also giving Alec a chance to get Ellie alone so he could give her a piece of his mind concerning the whole mucked up situation with Lucy's statement. It had all amounted to the fact that he had to get Ellie to drive to Sandbrook with him and that someone else had to look after her kids. Lucy had taken care of Tom and Fred before and had no room to say no after what he'd found out today, so he'd just gone and done what he'd been convinced had been the only logical thing to do and had arranged for the boys to stay overnight with her. He had known that it was unlikely that Ellie would agree to drive to Sandbrook with him after the day she'd had, so he had awaited her in her driveway and hadn't given her the opportunity to think long enough about his request — order — to say no.

At the time, he'd thought it was the best he could do.

Now, however, he wasn't so sure anymore that he'd been right about that.

Alec had never been any good at foreseeing the emotional consequences of his actions. Looking back, however, he could maybe understand why Ellie had been so angry with him. It just hadn't occurred to him at the time that it would make Ellie feel superfluous in her own, already chaotic life if he took all those decisions from her hands. But what would have happened if he hadn't done so? She'd probably have hidden away at home to mull over the latest development of the trial in solitude, working herself up about it further and further in the process. They wouldn't have followed up on Tess' lead on Gary Thorpe, and if this case was ever to be solved, they needed to go after every single clue, just as Ellie had been doing when she found the note with Thorpe's name on it. So had he been right to order Ellie around after all? Did acting logically outweigh respecting someone's personal boundaries and feelings?

Considering the first weeks he'd spent in Broadchurch, no. Alec remembered vividly how he had carefully erected walls around himself to contain the onslaught of feelings that had threatened to pull him under after Tess' betrayal and the collapse of the Sandbrook trial. Without the overly strict boundaries he'd set up around him, he wouldn't have been able to go on. It gave him a feeling of being in charge in a life that had completely spun out of control by then, both psychologically and physically.

If he looked at it that way, it would only be fair to accept Ellie's decision to drive home tonight. He looked at his wristwatch. Ten minutes had passed. He'd better start packing.

Alec huffed in annoyance, both of his hands back in the pockets of his trousers. DI Alec Hardy, accepting orders from his DS. Well, former DS. Well, also former DI. It was really just him and Ellie now. Without the rules of conduct that came with the hierarchy, they were floundering.

If he was being honest with himself, however, only he was. Ellie had obviously begun to find her new place. He was glad for her. She was finally taking charge of her life again. She could have started with someone else besides him, though.

She had, he remembered. She'd started with Tom, and she had persuaded him to come back home to his mother. To the house, even. No wonder, given how resolute she could be if she chose to.

Sniffing, Alec shrugged on his coat that he had deposited on the orange chair and stalked over to the dresser to pick up his wallet.

He was glad that Ellie had Tom back with her — he wished he could be close to Daisy as well. In contrast to him, Ellie had stopped running from her past. Instead, she'd started to take charge. He admired her for that. He had gone and buried himself in an old case — the reason his life had fallen apart — thinking that if he could put things right for the families, it would put his own life back together as well.

If he could take Tess' word on that — the irony of that thought wasn't lost on him — his single-mindedness when he was pursuing a lead had played a crucial part in the failing of his marriage. He just went and did what he thought needed doing, without looking left or right. Apparently, he'd continued the pattern without even noticing. Not that he'd ever actively tried to get rid of it. There hadn't been a point in doing so after the divorce. He hadn't planned on getting close enough to anyone that it would have been of any importance. In contrast, he'd been keen on keeping his distance.

Alec snorted at that thought. He obviously hadn't had a clue what life in small towns such as Broadchurch was like when he'd come there. Neither had he known anyone like Ellie Miller before. Keeping the bubbly, social Ellie at a distance had been a hopeless endeavour from the very start despite their constant bickering, and after a while, he'd grown accustomed to being around her, even felt comfortable in her presence.

Alec zipped his bag closed. Eleven minutes left.

Time to go tell the lady at reception he wasn't staying, to walk out to the car park and to be at Ellie's blue VW with five minutes to spare.

Ellie had never packed as quickly as today, not even the last time they'd been here when she for once hadn't had to pack for her children as well. She checked out in record time and was at the car seventeen minutes too early, which left her with more than enough time to think about her actions during the past hour.

Had she been too harsh with Alec? The thought almost made her laugh. Given his own abrasiveness towards others, no one could ever be too harsh with Alec Hardy. And yet, beneath all that grumpiness and his bellowed orders, she knew there was a man who cared. He'd shown her more than once — whenever it really mattered, he'd been there for her. The thought made her uncomfortable, and she pushed it away with determination.

There was no way Ellie was begging him to come with her if he decided to be a fuckwit about this and didn't show up in time. She hoped he'd be there, but given his stubbornness, it didn't seem very likely.

She pushed away from the side of the car in surprise when she saw Alec's shadow materialise behind the sliding glass doors of the hotel. She didn't know how long she'd been leaning against the car and keeping an eye on the entrance, but her left leg had fallen asleep and she hissed in pain when pins and needles shot up from her foot to her hip. She collapsed back against the car, desperately trying for a casual pose.

Alec, however, didn't move. He just stood there, a longish, blurred, grey, blue, white, and brown spot behind the glass.

Ellie checked her watch. Two more minutes, and she'd have to leave if she didn't want to make an idiot of herself.

She looked back up. Alec hadn't stirred in the slightest.

Ellie sighed. If they were turning this into a battle of wits, so be it. She carefully pushed away from the car and managed to stand safely on both legs. She slowly reached for the door handle and pulled on it. Glancing back at Alec, Ellie saw that he still hadn't moved. Time to up the game.

She opened the door fully, and staring at the fuzzy shadow that she knew was him, she slowly lowered herself onto the driver's seat. Nothing. She flicked a glance at the clock on the dashboard. One more minute.

Looking back up, Ellie pulled the door shut. As if startled into action, Alec tightened the hold on his bag, his movement causing the automatic doors to slide open. After a slight moment of hesitation, he started walking towards her.

Ellie did her best to not let the relief at that show. Instead, she kept her face carefully neutral.

When Alec reached the car, he didn't stop at the front door, but walked past it. Had he been leading her on? The rising anger quickly vanished when he opened the trunk to put his bag in it. Ellie managed to look indifferent by the time he pulled the passenger door open. The last digit of the car clock changed from two to three and she realised that her ultimatum was up. With that, she turned the key in the ignition, fully aware that Alec had only just sat down, his left leg still dangling over the threshold, his foot still on the asphalt of the car park. Still, she waited until he had gotten in properly and closed the door before she backed up so she could pull out of the parking space.

Ellie had thought that the first half hour or so of their first drive to Sandbrook had been awkward. She'd had no idea. They had been pretending the other person in the car didn't exist for close to an hour now. Ellie had clamped down on the urge to turn the radio on to fill the silence with meaningless chatter at least seven times, knowing it would annoy Alec. Why the hell did she even care?

Alec told himself for the fifth time that he preferred silence anyway. He had shown by accepting Ellie's ultimatum that he acknowledged her position on the matter of the argument, hadn't he? So there was nothing left to talk about. Then why did he feel an insufferable urge to explain himself, hoping Ellie would understand that he hadn't meant to upset her?

Careful not to turn his head, he chanced a glance at her from the corner of his eye. He couldn't see her face from that angle, but he got a good look at her hands on the steering wheel, framing the display that was glowing red and blue in the middle. She was gripping it hard enough for her knuckles to shine white in the dark. As if she'd realised that she had a death grip on the black, worn plastic, the muscles in her hands suddenly relaxed. He pretended not to notice and turned his eyes back to the annoyingly bright red lights of the car ahead of them. After a moment of deafening silence, he heard a sound to his right. Ellie was tapping the steering wheel with her index finger. It stopped as suddenly as it had started.

The ingrained urge to do everything possible to turn an awkward situation into a socially acceptable one warred with Ellie's conviction that she had nothing to apologise for. Well, maybe she shouldn't have yelled at Alec like that. When she became aware that she was tapping the steering wheel with her finger in a quick, uneasy rhythm, she stopped herself, hoping Alec hadn't noticed.

Not very likely. He was a bloody detective, after all. She flicked a glance at him as briefly and casually as she could manage, pretending to check the traffic in the neighbouring lane. Not that she planned on changing lanes. There was no one to overtake on the empty road, now that the car ahead of them had sped up enough to leave them behind alone in the darkness.

Alec was staring straight ahead, as per usual. Ellie decided it would be best if she did the same. She needed to concentrate on driving, after all.

Alec could feel Ellie watching him, but pretended not to notice. God, this was ridiculous. He hadn't been caught in a contest of wills this childish since he had gotten out of primary school. He needed to put a stop to it.

Still, he didn't have any idea how to react to Ellie's outburst from earlier. Tess' much more quiet, but perfectly aimed stabs he'd always answered with silence. Which hadn't worked out particularly well in the end, so… what now? If silence wasn't the way to go, what was it then? Talking?

If so, he could start by finally answering her question from earlier, he supposed. If she was still willing to talk to him at all, that was. Well, there was a way to find out about that.

Alec sniffed. "I… uh…. I haven't answered your question from earlier yet."

Ellie looked at him properly this time, only to see him talking to the windscreen.

"Right."

"If you still want an answer, that is, of course," he said, finally turning to look at her.

Ellie looked back at the road while gripping the steering wheel tighter and locking her elbows. She stayed like that for a moment and considered his offer. Relaxing, she said, "Yeah. Yeah, I think I do."

"I do understand. That you don't want me to tell you or anyone else in your family what to do."

Ellie flicked a glance at him, eyebrows raised.

"Do you really, though? Or are you just saying that to get the old Ellie back, the one who doesn't ever raise her voice, so everything can stay the way it has been?"

She needed to know. The old Ellie would have been grateful for his compliancy and the opportunity to let the argument go, but she wasn't letting Alec off the hook this easily anymore.

"I'm not," Alec said, looking ahead.

Ellie wanted to believe him. No, she did believe him, but was that the smart thing to do? How could she trust herself to trust anyone anymore?

The loud rumbling of Ellie's stomach interrupted the expectant silence that had descended upon them like a heavy blanket. Alec had impatiently waited for Ellie to acknowledge his answer — until she didn't and he had started hoping she wouldn't say anything rather than telling him she didn't believe him. Her empty stomach making itself unmistakably heard gave him a welcomed out. He let his head roll to the right and looked pointedly at Ellie.

Upon feeling Alec stare at her, Ellie gave him a challenging glare.

"What? Are you going to order me to eat? Maybe even tell me what I have to eat?"

Alec kept looking at her for a few beats — heartbeats, steady and strong, Ellie thought to herself, the idea still unfamiliar when it came to Alec - and then turned to look back at the windshield.

"I'd never do that."

If Ellie hadn't had glimpses of his sass before, she would have taken him seriously and been infuriated. As it was, however, she asked herself for a second time this evening if she'd been too tough on him. Maybe he had even meant what he said.

"What are you going to have for dinner once you get home?" Alec asked.

The question caught Ellie by surprise. She hadn't planned on having dinner, she'd become used to ignoring any pangs of hunger. She felt nauseous most of the time anyway.

Her silence while she pondered if she could possibly draw up the energy to make herself a sandwich after fetching her kids from Lucy's and putting Fred back to sleep was enough of an answer for Alec.

He raised his eyebrows at her. After a slight hesitation, he turned serious, and on a resigned exhale, said:

"It would do you good if you ate something tonight. There's no point in ruining yourself over any of this."

As I have done. Ellie heard it as clearly as if he had said it out loud. She had never thought about this before, only having known Alec as hollow-eyed and sickly looking from the start, but he had probably slipped into this self-punishing behaviour of his gradually as well. Without noticing, he'd been slowly killing himself until it had almost been too late.

Thankfulness filled her at the realisation that he was looking out for her so she wouldn't go down the same road, warring with sudden shyness. Why did he have to be so unexpectedly thoughtful at times? This wasn't how this usually worked.

Except it was.

Ellie's heart clenched at the realisation that Alec obviously hadn't had anyone to look out for him when he'd have needed it the most.

"Have you had dinner yet yourself?" she asked him.

"I didn't exactly have the time. Someone gave me an ultimatum."

Ellie couldn't help but take her eyes off the road for a moment to look at him. For an instant, she wondered what kind of man he had been before Sandbrook weighed him down until it almost pushed him into the ground. It wasn't easy to picture him as more lighthearted, yet there were moments that made her think he might have been, once. Before everything. Either way, she was grateful that he had steered the conversation into shallower waters.

Although it had always made her uncomfortable to tell others what to do, as had been painfully evident when Alec had made her lead the team meeting the first time, Ellie tried her best to sound decisive. The second time she'd had to do it when he was in hospital, it had gone a bit better already, after all. In the most confident tone she could muster, she told him:

"Alright then, we'll stop at the next opportunity and have dinner."

"Good."

By the time Ellie had pulled the key out of the ignition, loosened her seatbelt, gotten out of the car and rooted around on the backseat for her handbag, Alec was already at the door of the fast food restaurant. She'd never seen him move that quickly before without passing out. When she finally caught up with him at the counter, he grumbled:

"What do you want, Miller?"

"To eat," he clarified when she stared at him in confusion at the apparent abrupt change in his demeanour.

Taking in the greasy smell of fried potatoes, her stomach gargled.

"Fish and chips," she heard herself say.

"And fish and chips," Alec told the tired looking man behind the counter.

Ellie looked up to him surprisedly. When Alec only slightly raised an eyebrow at her, daring her to protest, she decided that she was too tired to fight and would just accept that he was apparently going to pay for her dinner. After all, she had been driving him around quite a lot, and her car wasn't a free taxi.

When they settled down in a booth somewhere in the middle of the empty restaurant, Ellie noticed the box Alec had brought for himself.

"Are you still only eating salad? Seriously? Do you actually like the stuff?"

Alec glanced down at the food in front of himself as if he were only now noticing what he had chosen and were slightly disgusted by it. Then, he eyed the steaming heap of fried food that sat before Ellie.

Without saying a word, Ellie pushed her tray towards him. Alec looked up at her questioningly. After a short pause, he began to shovel half of Ellie's food onto his plate. Just as Ellie was going to reach for hers to pull it back, he began to load half of his salad onto it, then pushed it towards her. He obviously expected her to protest — she noticed his expectant amusement from the crinkles around his eyes. Her annoyance at the heap of tasteless vegetables covering her chips melted at that. Ellie felt herself smile back. Embarrassed, she dug into her food to hide the blush she'd felt spreading along her cheeks at the realisation how much she enjoyed the unfamiliar absence of grumbling.

They ate in silence. As Ellie speared the last green leaf onto the fork that already held the last of her chips, she noticed how hungry and worn out she must have been before. She felt a lot more alert and a lot less cold.

With a satisfied sigh, she leaned back and watched Alec finish his food. After deliberately wiping his hands on a bunch of the thin, crackling paper napkins, he finally looked up and told her:

"Thanks for sharing, Miller."

"Thanks for making me eat salad. I hate salad," Ellie teased. She desperately wanted to keep the conversation in the safe, shallow waters it had been in for the last hour. She could see in his eyes how Alec closed the door in the walls he still had around him, the door that had just been opened a crack to let his thanks escape.

Turning earnest, she added:

"Really, thank you for suggesting I have dinner."

Her choice of words sent a wave of relief through Alec. Maybe he'd done something right after all. He let go of the napkin that he had crumpled into a tight, fat-stained ball, and let it fall onto the tray.

The next morning, Ellie awoke dreading the day even more than usual. With the tensions in the trial running high and after what she had gone through on the witness stand the day before, being at court would most likely draw all leftover energy out of her. Ellie disparagingly tried to pull the last scraps of strength together to get through it.

There wasn't much left to hold her up. And with the emptiness she found inside herself, the feeling of loneliness from the evening before in the hotel room returned with force. Sure, her kids were with her at the moment and Tom would even accompany her later, but he had a hard time coping with the turn his parents' lives had taken, and she was supposed to be the strong one, not him.

Lucy would be there as well, and while she had become more of a support than Ellie would ever have thought she could be, she still didn't feel that she was the stable source of comfort she needed. She longed for someone who was just there, someone she didn't have to explain herself to, but someone who understood how she felt and therefore didn't shower her with pity. Compassion was all she needed and all she could bear.

It all seemed to come back to Alec Hardy. His almost constant presence in the courtroom had somewhat grounded her. She didn't know what to make of that and given the unfair allegations of the day before, she had absolutely zero interest in analysing it. All she knew was that she couldn't stand to be there by herself and that she needed him to be in the room with her to provide the support Lucy couldn't give, because in contrast to him, she luckily had no idea how being thrust into the middle of such a horrible spectacle felt.

Although she felt bad for asking him for support after the way she had told him off the day before, Ellie reached for her phone.

"Will you be at the trial today?" she typed and hit sent before she could think any better of it.

Ellie deliberately put the phone down and told herself not to lie around waiting for an answer. She should get started on breakfast anyway. If she was honest with herself, it was still too early for that, however. She never slept long these days if she fell asleep at all. Not knowing what could possibly turn her thoughts away from the trial in the grey, lonely hours of the morning, she lay back down and stared at the ceiling.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her phone that she had put into silent mode in order to not wake Fred in his crib next to her bed light up. She had grabbed it before she was even aware that she was reaching for it.

"Yes," glowed brightly at her.

Ellie sagged back onto the pillows in relief. As long as she wasn't so terribly alone, as long as Alec was there somewhere, she would manage to get through the day.

When Ellie arrived at the court building with Tom trailing behind her, Alec was pacing up and down in the lobby, his arms crossed. When she reached him, he looked at her assessingly. Ellie's determined look — chin jutted forward, mouth set in a hard line — convinced him she had braced herself for the day as best as she could. He let his arms fall to his sides and turned to walk up the stairs in front of her and Tom.

Choosing a row of seats that was still completely empty, he left the decision on where to sit up to Ellie. He could understand if she wanted to put as much distance as possible between them after yesterday's accusations that had happened in this very room in front of the same group of people. When he turned to face the centre of the courtroom, he was equally surprised and relieved to find Ellie to his right. Tom had flopped down in the seat next to her, the hair that was hanging into his face almost obscuring his eyes.

It struck Lucy as odd to see the three of them lined up like that from her seat on the side of the room. In addition to the similarities in the way her sister and Hardy dressed — both wore different shades of grey and blue, the fact that they were both wearing suits only accenting their almost matching outfits — their facial expressions had begun to resemble each other as well the longer the trial went on. Both were frowning, their scepticism at the judge's words apparent from the downturn of their mouths. In contrast to yesterday morning, however, El looked resolved to get through today without falling apart. Even last night, when she had unexpectedly come for her kids, she hadn't looked as lost and alone as when she had been exposed to the piercing accusations of the defence lawyer, despite the late hour and the fact that she'd had a long drive behind her. Whatever they'd been talking about — although Lucy couldn't quite picture El and Hardy having a normal conversation — must have helped her sister to find a new resolve.

Five hours later, when they heard Ben on the gallery above them announce that the jury had been let go for the day since they hadn't been able to reach an agreement, Alec turned to Ellie and asked "What will you do now?" as the tension of waiting for a possible verdict finally escaped for the day together with a pent up breath he hadn't been aware he had been holding.

"Don't know," Ellie said, studying the gleaming marble floor.

Uh oh. She was going to go home to lament the unfairness of a still unresolved trial, wasn't she? And if that was what she planned on doing, there was nothing he could do about it after the silent agreement they had reached yesterday. While he buried himself in work to fill his mind with thoughts other than those about his personal misery, Ellie tended to draw back into herself when she felt overwhelmed. When she did that, he could see her mind going in circles around the crater the latest impact had left. He hated watching that. Considering her expression, however, that wasn't happening at the moment, which caught Alec by surprise.

She seemed to be building up to something that she hadn't quite managed to say out loud yet.

Suddenly determined, she looked up at him, both a question and resolve in her eyes.

"Are you going to continue working on Sandbrook today? Because I need a distraction. I can't sit around and simply wait for tomorrow. Tom is going to spend time with Olly anyway and Fred is still at the childminder's because I didn't know when I would get away from here. I'd like to come with you and look at the evidence again. Maybe we can still solve it."

Alec had been resolved to not bring the topic up today. Ellie had made it clear enough that she didn't want him to pull her into his mess unasked. Now that she had decided she wanted to continue working on the case, he was barely able to contain his enthusiasm. He felt that another pair of eyes was necessary — he needed to know that he hadn't lost sight of more important clues. And Ellie finding Gary Thorpe's name had illustrated how much attention she paid to details — details he might have missed in his desperation and fury.

Working on Sandbrook in front of the collected information on the case that Ellie had arranged on a wall of Alec's living room in a desperate, overnight attempt at escaping her own mess of a life proved to be more of a distraction than she had anticipated.

Ellie had spent so much time around Alec that his presence was familiar enough that she usually barely noticed it, so it bugged her that something about him seemed so… different today. It made concentrating on drawing the paths of the different suspects much harder than it should have been and she stuttered her way into the reconstruction of the events in the hours before the two girls went missing. When she couldn't find the next dot on Claire's path and Alec stepped closer to point to it, she was suddenly hit by the realisation that the faintly acerbic smell of constant distress that used to surround him before the surgery was gone.

Instead, only the clean smell of soap and cotton surrounded him. Perceiving Alec as healthy and energetic instead of as solely kept alive and driven by desperation was foreign enough to her that she diverted all her surprise and confusion into overcompensating.

She forcefully attacked the paper with another coloured pen to draw in Ricky's movements. When Alec appeared from behind her to add what they knew about Lee, she snapped. Throwing the pen onto the table, she tried to put some distance between them in order to gain time to get used to this new version of him. She didn't come far in the cramped living room, so all she could do was sit down in a chair and try to focus on the information Alec was spouting from memory. Just when she thought she would be able to catch a breath, Alec pointed to a photo she hadn't noticed before. Something about it struck her as odd.

"When was that taken?" she asked.

"Um, about a week before," Alec mumbled, not paying much attention, and went on in his retelling of the known events of that day.

Ellie's attention was only ripped from the picture when he asked why Lee had lied about how he knew about Thorpe Agriservices - why he even knew the name Thorpe at all. She had been part of a tightly knit community for long enough to know that gossip was often tried to mask by pretending that it had been heard through someone else rather than being something the person in question had first started the rumour about. She couldn't help but see the parallels. Lee would most likely have known about Gary Thorpe if he had heard about him from the source itself - Lisa, who had been stalked by Thorpe.

It took Alec a moment to understand what she was saying. Then, it dawned on him and be blurted out in amazement:

"Exactly! Oh Miller, there it is, that's the lie! That's the wee lie! He wanted me to think he'd heard about Thorpe through Cate, but what if it was through Lisa?"

"Well, if that's the case, Lee must have known her better than he's ever admitted."

When Alec excitedly nodded "Mustn't he?" relief shot through Ellie. She had just helped to unravel a part of a net of lies that Alec hadn't been able to untangle on his own. Lee had probably somehow been close to Lisa. Which put him back on top of the list of suspects, but this time with a lot more to support the position than just Alec's mistrust in him.

Ever since Joe's arrest and Beth's accusing "How could you not know?", Ellie had doubted her abilities as a detective. Miller, the brilliant copper, lying next to a murderer. Part of the bitterness of this conclusion that she had drawn for herself during that dreaded night months ago melted away. Maybe she wasn't completely useless at the job she had always wanted and worked towards. For the first time since that day, she allowed herself to think that while her trusting nature might have made it easier for Joe to lie to her, she wasn't completely blind to suspicious patterns.

With renewed energy, she threw herself into a detailed analysis of the picture of the Ashworth's half finished living room floor. Maybe she could trust her instincts after all. Something was off about the photo, and if she carefully considered every detail, surely she could find out what it was?

"Miller? Miller! I'm going to go out, there's something I need to do. You can stay here if you want, but… would you please promise me something?"

Confused by being ripped out of her contemplations, Ellie looked questioningly up at Alec. What was important enough to derail her train of thought like that?

"Would you please eat something while I'm away? I wouldn't even mind if you finished the bread and used the last of the milk again, as long as it means you don't try to starve yourself tonight."

Still lost in the details of the picture swirling around in her head, which mingled with the confusion Alec's unexpected plea had caused, Ellie looked mutely up at him from her perch on the chair.

"Please, Ellie," Alec pleaded with her. His expression reminded her of the day he'd begged for her help with Claire.

She nodded absentmindedly.

"Okay."

"I mean it, Miller. Don't do this to yourself." By now, his voice matched the desperation apparent in his face.

The depth of his concern sunk in and drew Ellie's full attention. She belatedly realised that taking charge of her life also meant that it was her own task to make sure that she took care of herself. No more waiting for someone else to tell her what to do.

Finally giving him her undivided attention, she answered "Yeah. Yeah, I will. I promise."

Alec questioningly held her gaze from where he was standing with one hand on the door handle. When she silently gave the promise again with her eyes, he finally seemed satisfied and turned to leave.

With her attention already returning to the picture in her hands, Ellie almost missed his softly mumbled "Look after yourself, Miller," shortly before the door fell closed behind him.


End file.
